Puzzlement over Heartbleed bug guidance

There has been a huge amount of news coverage in regard to the Heartbleed bug, and you can completely understand why there are some people out there not only worried about this new virus, but also confused. This is because many websites and news outlets are telling us that we should take a day off work to change passwords we have saved to log in to websites.

However, there are other experts saying that we should not be too hasty because changing passwords could make the Heartbleed virus an even bigger problem – so what should you do?

The two arguments – The Hearbleed bug is able to take advantage of a flaw found in OpenSSL, which is an encryption software used by many of the popular websites. We are told that the virus could gain access to sensitive data, such as passwords, emails, usernames, credit card details and more.

It stands to reason why we are being told to do what we can, and so the first thing is to change these passwords right away. This is what we are always being told what to do when bugs like these arise, and you won’t be blamed for following the first piece of advice.

However, other experts have waded in and put a different perspective on the Heartbleed bug. It would seem that inaction would be the best course of action, which means staying away from the websites that have been affected by the bug, which you can see a list of HERE.

You can still visit websites unaffected by this bug and change your passwords as a precaution, which to us, makes perfect sense, as it is a preemptive measure because we know many of you use the same username and password for many websites and services.

We hear about such bugs all the time and in most cases they often pose a much smaller threat than expected, but scare tactics seems to be the world we live in at the moment.